Things that annoy me about alignment
Nov. 27th, 2019 01:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethSo I read DnD, Pathfinder, and a set of books by Mickey Zucker Reichert way back, like twenty years for some of it, and all of them were big into Alignment. Good and Evil, Law and Chaos. Big oppositions.
MZR's books were about a principle true neutral character trying to keep a balance between all four of the forces. But MZR's good and evil were more of a selfless to selfish continuum. Good aligned people and societies do things because of their friends and society, big groups. Evil aligned individuals do things for themselves, or their immediate family, a tiny group that cannot be expanded. But both ends of the spectrum can end up doing the same things, both can go to war, they'll just have different reasons. The argument was that a healthy life needs to balance selfless and selfish, the needs of the many and the needs of the one. Getting that balance was neutrality.
But.
In Pathfinder that isn't how it works. Even being totally selfish and acting only for yourself
is neutral.
Good people want to help other people
Evil people want to hurt other people.
Not wanting to do either actively because you only think about yourself
is neutral.
... bit of a values clash there
And: In MZR's version, Law and Chaos is more of a stasis and change thing?
Chaos introduces the concept of lying, but also of imagining a future different than the past.
Pathfinder Law and Chaos can also map to the selfish selfless continuum! Lawful groups act together as larger structures and societies. Can map to selfless. Chaotic groups, well, aren't, when you get down to it. They're a crowd of people doing their own thing. Thinking about themselves.
Except actually Pathfinder has a whole diagonal line that is Freedom vs Slavery? Slavery is Lawful Evil and Freedom as an active goal you seek for yourself and others is Chaotic Good.
And it's not that Slavery is Evil (and boy do I have an argue with that) because a neutral good goddess doesn't mind about slavery (or at least her followers dont and they get spells).
So Lawful is structure and community and contracts and also slavery.
Which is creeptastic.
... actually I just googled and apparently word of one writer is Sarenrae doesn't like slavery but also wont kill slavers so their method of freeing slaves involves buying them.
well that's a whole argument right there.
... It was cleaner day and I stopped writing to let the cleaner out and get ready for the afternoon and now I've lost what little thread I had.
I think my point was: Law Chaos Good Evil bundles so many concepts that you end up with different writers appearing to use the same framework but actually meaning very opposite things.
And I've got arguments about all of them thus far.
But especially am not happy with ones that see Chaotic as a flawed or broken sort of Lawful rather than a virtue in its own lights.
MZR's books were about a principle true neutral character trying to keep a balance between all four of the forces. But MZR's good and evil were more of a selfless to selfish continuum. Good aligned people and societies do things because of their friends and society, big groups. Evil aligned individuals do things for themselves, or their immediate family, a tiny group that cannot be expanded. But both ends of the spectrum can end up doing the same things, both can go to war, they'll just have different reasons. The argument was that a healthy life needs to balance selfless and selfish, the needs of the many and the needs of the one. Getting that balance was neutrality.
But.
In Pathfinder that isn't how it works. Even being totally selfish and acting only for yourself
is neutral.
Good people want to help other people
Evil people want to hurt other people.
Not wanting to do either actively because you only think about yourself
is neutral.
... bit of a values clash there
And: In MZR's version, Law and Chaos is more of a stasis and change thing?
Chaos introduces the concept of lying, but also of imagining a future different than the past.
Pathfinder Law and Chaos can also map to the selfish selfless continuum! Lawful groups act together as larger structures and societies. Can map to selfless. Chaotic groups, well, aren't, when you get down to it. They're a crowd of people doing their own thing. Thinking about themselves.
Except actually Pathfinder has a whole diagonal line that is Freedom vs Slavery? Slavery is Lawful Evil and Freedom as an active goal you seek for yourself and others is Chaotic Good.
And it's not that Slavery is Evil (and boy do I have an argue with that) because a neutral good goddess doesn't mind about slavery (or at least her followers dont and they get spells).
So Lawful is structure and community and contracts and also slavery.
Which is creeptastic.
... actually I just googled and apparently word of one writer is Sarenrae doesn't like slavery but also wont kill slavers so their method of freeing slaves involves buying them.
well that's a whole argument right there.
... It was cleaner day and I stopped writing to let the cleaner out and get ready for the afternoon and now I've lost what little thread I had.
I think my point was: Law Chaos Good Evil bundles so many concepts that you end up with different writers appearing to use the same framework but actually meaning very opposite things.
And I've got arguments about all of them thus far.
But especially am not happy with ones that see Chaotic as a flawed or broken sort of Lawful rather than a virtue in its own lights.